Tom Purl’s Web Site

I noodled around with my MVP/MVPMC setup a little bit more, and discovered the following:

1. Live-TV with my MythTV backend actually works pretty well. I just needed to fix my timezone settings.
2. VLC transcoding, which allows me to view Xvid AVI’s using MVP, is a pretty CPU-intensive process. The default video quality level (labled “DVD”) used about 95% of the CPU cycles of my 1.6 Ghz Sempron 3100+. I ended up using the “SVCD” video quality level, which is still pretty good, and only uses about 65% of my CPU cycles.

That’s it for now. Soon, I hope to have everything set up properly so I can share some of the details that might matter to someone considering the MVP, such as the following:

• network topology
• configuration
• total costs

Well, I got the MVP last Thursday night, and it’s pretty freakin’ sweet. Here’s my impressions so far:

1. It was easier to set up than I thought it would be, even though I’m also using MVP Media Center (MVPMC) instead of the stock software provided by Hauppauge.
2. The video quality is very good in my opinion, more than adequate, though I’m not a connoisseur of such things.
3. It’s even smaller than I thought it would be, which is great. Also, even though it’s silent and fanless, it stays pretty cool.

Also, I have a few things that I need to look into before I’m completely comfortable with everything:

1. Non-MPEG playback is a little slow. This is due to the fact that AVI’s have to be transcoded to MPEG on my media server using VLC and then streamed to the MVP as an MPEG. My media server is a little underpowered (512 MB of RAM, single-core 1.6 Ghz Sempron processor), so I need to see about tweaking the amount of resources that VLC requires.
2. Live TV seems to be mostly-broken. I don’t know if I really need this feature, but I may spend a few hours trying to make it usable.

After day 1, I’m very happy. I am now able to watch any type of movie that is stored on my Ubuntu media server, including MPEG’s, Xvid AVI’s, Ogg Theora, and movies stored within my MythTv backend (which is on the same server). The next step is to move the MVP out of my “sandbox” and into the living room where it can be used by someone other than me. I will be sure to post some of the important details, including my eventual network topology and MVPMC configuration files.